Perhaps the most crucial phrase in business is customer loyalty. If you were able to conclude that people trust you with their money and personal information, you have undoubtedly succeeded and have surpassed competitors who have been unable to do so for many years or decades.
Customers’ trust does not appear out of nowhere, it must be won. This is done both at the first contact with the buyer and when building subsequent dialogues, closing the transaction.
There are several strategies for gaining a customer’s favor, developing relationships based on trust, and inspiring loyalty to the name and goods of the business. However, you run the danger of making errors along the road that could result in a total loss of confidence. Our content will teach you how to cultivate and assess client loyalty.
What is customer loyalty?
It is a positive attitude of the buyer towards the company, which is expressed in long-term interaction with it and a high degree of satisfaction.
Why customer loyalty is important
According to Pareto’s law, 20% of buyers bring 80% profit. Therefore, it is extremely beneficial for businesses to cultivate loyal customers, build long-term relationships with them, and increase their retention level.
The degree of customer loyalty
Customer happiness is the foundation of loyalty. It is directly influenced by the emotional bond with the brand and the interactional experience. There are overall three primary levels of loyalty.
- Rational loyalty. It is built on the fact that clients consider a certain brand and its goods to be better and better than others on the market.
- Emotional loyalty. It assumes that the clients choose a company relying not so much on the quality of goods and services as on their feelings. Therefore, emotional loyalty motivates you to buy goods again and again in a certain store, although there are the same in another.
- Behavioral loyalty. It is based on the tendency to purchase products of the same brand in the absence of any attachment. That is, the buyer can buy product X for five days in a row, and on the sixth day, not finding it on the shelf, just take another one.
How to build customer loyalty
When clients utilize a good or service, they should feel satisfied, infused with loyalty and respect for the firm, and willing to return and suggest you to their friends and family. You must be able to manage the first meeting well if you want these consumers to increase in number.
Coming to you for the first time, people have no idea who they will deal with, and your main task is to build an image of a brand that you want to trust, which is attractive from the first minute. We have compiled for you a list of seven simple rules that will help in this.
Rule 1: Always be in touch
Respond as soon as possible to all incoming calls, emails, texts, website requests, and comments on social media. People immediately obtain feedback and realize that the company cares about them when a business operates in a customer-oriented manner.
The surest way to boost the client’s trust is to ensure that they are confident: you are always there, always answer them, listen carefully, and solve any of their problems when they contact a local phone number. There are two ways to implement this:
24/7 sit at your work computer and manually track all emails and notifications. Anyone who has ever tried to do such work will agree that it is almost impossible to cope with it 100%, especially if you have a large client flow.
Organize your work wisely: connect a special tool that will automatically monitor all social networks and messengers. This solution is effective both for large companies with a stable large flow of orders and for small firms.
This is a further crucial step that will assist you in gaining the respect and loyalty of your audience. Post uplifting testimonials about your business, promote it, and take advantage of any opportunity to tell people about it. Let them know that you put in a lot of effort, have a lot of happy customers, and that they should thank you and keep doing business with you.
Ideally, if you manage to persuade people to remove UGC precisely for your company, offer them some nice bonuses, gifts, or discounts, and in return, get positive feedback. You can also create a personal hashtag under which your satisfied customers will post product reviews.
Rule 3: Report your mistakes
Reporting mistakes is not just not forbidden – it must be done if you intend to conduct an honest, open, customer-oriented business. Everyone makes mistakes; even the highest-quality services occasionally fall short because people sometimes forget, become confused, or make math errors. Act carefully and correct errors as soon as you find them to avoid a quiet mistake becoming a loud controversy.
Do not try to hush up an awkward situation, openly admit your guilt to the client. This will erase the boundaries and let customers know that they are cooperating with people like themselves.
Did you mix up the size of the T-shirt that the client ordered? Apologize, offer a free replacement of the product and attach a nice little present. People will understand that you take a responsible approach to work and take care of them, and instead of an angry review on social networks, you will get the trust of customers.
In the modern world, social networks are the face of the brand. It depends solely on your efforts what kind of person this person will be: will it attract, endear, and arouse the sympathy and trust of customers? Or, on the contrary, will it push you away?
Everything, even the way the pages are designed, is crucial. All of your accounts should be simple to use, clear to comprehend, and easily available. Create a sense of comfort and order by making them in the same style, using the author’s handwriting, and correctly structuring the content. Your brand should have a distinct voice that is clear and recognizable.
Rule 5: Make important information accessible and easy to obtain
Every customer who is going to purchase some particular product needs to know exactly where your office is located, what are the terms and delivery times, and the final cost of the order.
The address is typically stated in the page’s general information, but to clarify any remaining specifics, it will be very helpful to place answers to frequently asked questions by customers under the description and copy them on the website. Create a brief FAQ on common client problems, offer automatic cost and delivery time calculation, and provide.
Rule 6: Let the brand have a face
How to gain the trust of customers and win them over to you? The identity of the brand creator will help here. Show the founder of the company, let people see that it is the same person as them, walk with children in the park, and cook a huge family pizza on Fridays. Tell stories from life and broadcast values. The more personal information and cute cozy details you can cover, the more trust your clients will treat you. The brand will have its face, and in the future, your company will be associated with it among customers.
How to measure customer loyalty
Due to the complexity of the concept of client loyalty, businesses frequently track a variety of indications to gauge it. Based on these, marketers assess the situation as it is, alter their marketing tactics, and assess the success of their efforts. Find out what metrics will enable you to assess the degree of loyalty.
Loyalty reflects the client’s commitment to a particular brand or company, their willingness to stay with her, and choosing her among competitors. Loyalty implies that the client responds positively to the brand’s communication, and is involved in its activities. This is a guarantee that your customer will stay with you even in difficult times, and it is not just about money.
That is, not all regular clients are loyal. A vivid example demonstrates the difference between a regular customer and a loyal one: the first one can buy from you again, but if conditions change, such a client will go to a competitor without hesitation.
The loyal one will buy again and encourage others to do the same. Such a client not only brings financial profit, but also becomes the “lawyer” of the company: provides honest recommendations, advertises the store and products, and also gives high-quality feedback.
If we talk about measuring loyalty, then, as a rule, it comes down to the customer satisfaction indices Net Promoter Score (NPS) and Customer Satisfaction Index (CSI).
NPS is a key measurement metric. It shows how satisfied clients are with the company’s goods and whether they are ready for repeat purchases. It is calculated by subtracting the number of detractors from the number of promoters, dividing the result by the total responders, and multiplying the result by 100.
CSI is also a customer satisfaction index. But unlike NPS, it lets you assess the client’s satisfaction with a particular product, a separate process, or a service aspect. The calculation principle is similar to NPS only with division by key parameters that are based on the details of the product. For example, it can be price, service quality, loyalty program accessibility, and so on. Then field studies are conducted, in which the importance and satisfaction with each criterion are revealed. The score is set on a ten-point scale. Additionally, open-ended questions can be included in the study for a clearer understanding of the attitude towards the company.
Another indicator that is sometimes used to assess loyalty is the Customer Loyalty Index (CLI). This is an extended version of the NPS, in which not one question is asked, but three:
- How likely are you to tell your friends about us?
- Will you repurchase the same item from us?
- Ready to experience some of our other offerings?
The number of loyal consumers can be measured in different ways, and doing so is crucial for realizing how your firm is doing. Since it is challenging for even the biggest and most prosperous businesses to estimate the number of devoted consumers they have, it is considerably more challenging to predict how that number will change over time, such as over a year or a month.
Discover the benefits of a loyal customer base
Building consumer loyalty is more important than ever in the modern world. This will allow you to ensure that your company has a solid customer base supporting it, which will help you maintain a steady flow of income and bring in new clients.
You will indeed need to put some effort into winning over customers’ loyalty. But as we’re sure you will agree, the benefits you receive in return make the work well worth it.
